The murderous three-day assault on India’s financial and entertainment capital of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), in which about 200 people were killed, points to the extreme danger posed by Pakistan. That nation is a frighteningly unstable nuclear power that functions less like a country than “chaos with a parliament,” in the memorable phrase of military analyst/columnist Ralph Peters.

The attack, U.S. and Indian investigators believe, was the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militia group with links to al-Qaida and to Muslims fighting India over the disputed region of Kashmir. The group’s members practice Wahabism, a radical form of Islam born in Saudi Arabia and devoted to the hatred and conquest of those who are not Muslim fundamentalists.

The militia has also received direct support from Pakistan’s rogue Inter-Service Intelligence agency, despite the Pakistan government’s nominal attempts to ban the group under pressure from the Bush administration after 9/11. Lashkar-e-Taiba operates essentially as a “state within a state” in Pakistan, providing a wide array of services to its constituents, from medical care to training in mass murder

Investigators see its imprint on the Mumbai operation. Though the terrorists used relatively simple weapons in the attack — machine-guns and explosives (rather than, say, hijacked passenger jets) — complex planning was obviously involved. They hit numerous targets at once. And to get into position without being detected until the last possible moment, investigators say, some of the terrorists commandeered an Indian fishing vessel, murdered its captain and crew, and used it as a platform from which to launch inflatable boats off Mumbai.

The usual blame-the-West-first crowd branded the attacks as more evidence that America has not done enough to lift the Muslim people out of poverty and free them from their corrupt leaders. But isn’t it Muslims’ job to do that?

America was clearly in the periphery of the terrorists’ thoughts, if there at all. The assaults seemed aimed at India, which at least until recently had been booming economically (and thus, almost inevitably, militarily) because of its education, work ethic, rising democratic values, rule of law and generally Western focus. The idea was evidently to humiliate India, expose its vulnerability and undermine its economy.

The big question now is: What can be done to make Pakistan’s shadow government less of a threat to its neighbors? U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed up India’s call for “strong action” against terrorists harbored by Pakistan, a country that has long been a U.S. ally and enjoys substantial aid from American taxpayers. Secretary Rice called for a thorough investigation, adding, “This is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation, and that’s what we expect.”

That is a tall order in a country where elements of the government cannot be trusted and many political leaders face assassination.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, whose hold on power may be tenuous, insisted that the attackers were “non-state actors.” But the outgoing and incoming U.S. administrations should put intense pressure on Mr. Zardari to work at rooting out the terrorists that Pakistan has long harbored.